Follow Your Dream with Robert Miller: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Created with John Ushai. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to follow your dream. To drop these value bombs, I have brought to Robert Miller and the EO Fire Studios. Robert is a musician who followed his dream later in life and became a rock star. You're never too old, and it's never too late to follow your dream. In Fire Nation, today's value bombs are that you can be successful at any age, at any time in your life.

0:37Everybody has a plan and most are sidetracked from those dreams, Fire Nation, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Robert and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:12Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Robert, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, JLD, and what's up to Fire Nation? um look i believe that you can be successful at any age and at any time in your life and most people would disagree with that they think that if you don't succeed when you're young that's it game over well i'm a musician and i had a youthful dream to become a rock star but life got in the way like it does for so many of us my dream faded away not just for a few years but for a few decades But I finally jumped into the deep end of the pool, and it was the best thing that I ever did.

2:05And Fire Nation, we're going to do a deep dive on that story because so many of you, including myself, by the way, are going to resonate with this. You're going to pull value bombs, inspiration, motivation, because today is all about following your dream, Fire Nation, by listening to the story of somebody who finally followed his dream and what that looked like. So as you kind of mentioned earlier, Robert, you were a child. And as a child, your dream was to become a rock star. Share that dream with us. Well, you're absolutely right. I was born into a family where my father played music and I was taught from an early age that I was going to be a musician.

2:49And they started me on piano and I didn't love trumpet because that was my father's instrument. And then my world changed in the 1960s when this little band from Liverpool came around and played on the Ed Sullivan show. And I'm talking, of course, about the Beatles. Everybody wanted to be a musician at that point. And certainly I did too. And I formed a little band with my friends and started to play. And I switched to bass because I had already learned how to play the treble clef from the trumpet. And somebody had to play the bass. And that's how I became a bass player. And I kept playing the bass.

3:23And I was sure I was going to be a rock star. That was my destiny. But you know what? life doesn't always take you in the direction that you think it's going to take you. And I went off track and it took me a long time, John, before I got back on that track. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, we all get off track sometimes just for a couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of months, a couple of years, or what about decades? Because as it does for so many people, Roberts, life gets in the way. I mean, we're talking marriage, kids, job, obligations. I mean, so many people get into so much debt into this consumer culture.

4:01They are literally shackled to whatever crappy, crummy job that they have just to keep going. How did your dream slip out of focus? Take us down that path. Well, you're absolutely right. I thought I was going to be a musician. I thought that was going to be my career. And when I graduated from college, I was a broadcasting major. So I got myself an entry-level job in a public television station up in Boston. And I was doing that during the day and I was playing music at night. And it was great, except for the fact that I was making maybe$100 a week between the two jobs. And this was not a career.

4:38This was a dead end. And I finally said to myself, what am I going to do about this? And somebody suggested to me, well, why don't you go to law school? And I said, law school? Why would I want to do that? and my friend said to me well you're playing with a guy and it was true who was a medical doctor he did his medicine during the day and he played music at night he said well you can you can do exactly what he's doing and i thought about it for about a nanosecond because you know i'm a 20 year old jerk and i went and i went to law school and i thought to myself okay great i'll get a job as a lawyer i'll work during the day i'll play my music at night this will be perfect except it didn't work out that way at all.

5:18Okay. As they say, the law is a jealous mistress. I was working 23 hours a day as a lawyer. I stopped playing music for 15 years. Let me repeat that. I stopped playing music for 15 years. I was miserable about it, but I couldn't get myself out of that hole. I was married. I had kids. I had a job. I had obligations. I had a dream, but that dream was fading. And it was a bad point in my life. I mean, Fire Nation, how many of us have fallen into that trap? And of course, there's good times during those years that kind of keep moving you along. I mean, I look back to my 20s when I got out of the military.

6:00My dad was a lawyer. And by the way, he wasn't really pro attorney. He wasn't like, this is a great profession. He's like, yeah, if you can find something else, I'd kind of would recommend that. But I still was like, now like you know it's my dad he makes a lot of money life must be good and I went to law school now fortunately I pulled the plug after just one semester because I could find it was not for me and and I was again fortunate because I was a single guy you know no kids no responsibilities no house I'd saved up some good money from my time in the military specifically during my 13 month tour of duty in Iraq so I had some cash in the bank which gives you so much freedom fire nation, which is why you stay away from debt.

6:41And it allowed me to be like, you know what, I'm just going to stop and I'll find something else out. Because I knew I could at that time, but not everybody finds themselves in that situation because again, life gets in the way, marriage, kids, jobs, obligations. Your dream will slip out of focus if you don't hang on with every fiber of your body. But I kind of want to keep moving forward here because at age 60, and this is when most people are like being like, okay, time to hang it up, go golfing every day or fishing or just sit by the pool and just get fatter. You decided it was time to go after your dream.

7:13So fill in anything you want between, you know, your kind of middle years of struggling and working 23 hours a day up to age 60, and then talk about what you decided to do at that point. Well, look, I had a dream and I believe everybody has a dream. We start out life usually as when we're younger and the dreams are big. I mean, people dream about becoming an astronaut, becoming a baseball player, maybe becoming a rock star like I did. We all have those dreams. And for most of us, the unfortunate answer is that we get sidetracked from those dreams. And it's not because it's anything evil or anything like that.

7:53That's just the way life takes us. We fall into a job. We fall into a lifestyle. We fall into one thing or another. And then we wake up one day and we say, what happened? And that's kind of what happened to me. I was on a track. I was on a path to do what I love, which is to play music. And I had gotten off that path. Finally, when I was in my 40s, I started to get a little bit closer to the path. It was like I got on the entrance road for the highway, okay? And I was starting to play again. I started to get my chops together, as we say in music. And I made a record, and I put a band together, and we played at several gigs and stuff like that.

8:36But it was more like a hobby, more like an avocation. I was halfway there, but I wasn't where I wanted to be. And of course, all of my friends when I was younger and music was it for me, they had already been there. They had already done it. They had already made successes of themselves. And I was jealous as could be. And I said, something has to happen here. And you never want to go through your life and regret things. That's my belief. As I said, we all start off with a dream. We all, some of us get there. Some of us don't get there. but you never want to wake up at any point in your life and say, gee, I wish I had tried.

9:14And that's the big essence of what my message is here. I woke up finally when I was about 60 and I said, I am going to regret it for the rest of my time on this planet. If I don't take my shot, I may not make it. I may not be successful. Who knows where it's going to go, but I never want to look back and say, I didn't take the shot. And so I made a decision and I just kind of put everything else to the side. And as I like to say, I figuratively jumped into the deep end of the pool. What did that mean? Well, the first thing it meant is that I had to start writing music again. I hadn't been writing music in years and I needed to form a band.

9:57And I wanted to infuse myself with youth and vitality. Because let's face it, the music business is a young person's game. I am the oddball in music. I don't know of anybody else that went into music full-time when they were my age and made it. Everybody else that's in their 60s or so, they've been around for 30, 40, 50 years and playing. I started from square one. And you know what? In five years, John. I've got 10 albums, including a billboard number one. I've got over 4 million video views, over a million Spotify streams, over 50 ,000 Facebook fans. I've played festivals and concerts around the world.

10:40I've opened for artists like Edgar Winter and Blues Traveler. It's been an unbelievable experience for me. And it's because I decided to jump into that deep end of the pool and to give it a try. And you know, it's all about the journey. It's not the destination. If it hadn't worked, I would have been just as happy that I had given it a shot. Fire Nation, there are so many things to take away from this. I mean, that last part that Robert just shared, it's about the journey. I mean, think about this Dale Carnegie quote, which is so relevant to this. Success and happiness is the gradual realization of a worthy ideal.

11:22the gradual realization of a worthy ideal that doesn't mean it's the realization of a worthy ideal he put gradual in there for a reason because the gradual realization is the journey it's the journey you need to enjoy and I've recommended this book before I'm going to recommend it again The Five Biggest Regrets of the Dying and that's when a hospice nurse interviewed tons of people who were on the last days of their life and one of the biggest regrets one of their top five biggest regrets is that they never followed their dreams. They let other people's opinions, other people's just peer pressure dictate their life, and they had nothing but regret as a result.

12:01So if that's you right now, Fire Nation, take this as some inspiration, because I can tell you right now, Roberts, when he gets to the end of his life, hopefully many, many years from now, he is not going to regret what he did at 60 years old, one iota. And we have so much more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The overwhelm that comes with choosing the right software and tools for growing your business is real. With so many options and so little time, how are you supposed to know which platform is best? You've got your email marketing platform, payment systems, content tools, the list goes on.

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13:13meaning your marketers, sales reps, and service teams actually have the time to be, well, marketers, sales reps, and service teams. And when they grow, the sky's the limit for your business too. Grow better, faster with HubSpot's all-in-one intuitive customer platform. Visit hubspot.com to learn more. One of my favorite places to visit in the late summer months is my home state of Maine. There's just something about being on a lake in August and September that I absolutely love. And now that we have a little one, spending time with family is that much sweeter. Something else I love, sharing my home in Puerto Rico when I'm away.

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14:35We're talking those 10 albums, including a Billboard number one, four million video views, a million Spotify streams. You've been rocking it with people like Edgar Winter, Blues Travelers, Bonnie James, and Mindy Abair, and so many more people. Are we ever too old? Is it ever too late to follow our dreams? No, I believe very strongly that you're never too old, and it's never too late to follow your dream. I mean, just look at my life. I shouldn't be able to be saying all the things that I'm telling you on this show, John. They shouldn't have happened. But they did. And they did because I had a strong belief system.

15:16I had a dream. I went after it. Maybe there was a little talent in there as well. But I decided afterwards that because my story was so unique and people found it inspiring and motivating that I wanted to do something. I wanted to kind of give back, if you will. And we were in the midst of the pandemic, of course, and that was a miserable time for musicians and artists of all different types and stripes. And so I decided that I was going to start a podcast. And of course, I have called it Follow Your Dream. And my desire and And my wish is that I would be able to inspire and motivate others to follow and to succeed at their dream, whatever that dream might be.

16:02Tell us a little bit more about this Follow Your Dream podcast. Who should listen? What do you do? What's your frequency like? Give us some details. It's once a week. I started this in March of this year. It's already, I'm pleased to say, in the top 5 % of podcasts in terms of downloads. I mean, that's something I'm really proud of. And what I think that means is that it's resonating. This is for all those people out there, all the ones that I've described earlier, people that had a dream that maybe don't even remember their dream, or if they do remember it, they just never went after it for whatever it is.

16:37And it could be anything, John. It could be starting a new business, starting a hobby, opening a store. Dreams come in all different shapes and sizes. Mine happened to be music, but that's not the only type of dream. There's a zillion dreams out there. And what I'm trying to do is to help people figure out their dream and then take those baby steps, which is what's necessary in order to accomplish their dream. And I really believe in that. Everything that has succeeded in my life has been a result of me developing an action plan. And to me, an action plan is nothing more than a series of baby steps to get you from point A to point Z.

17:22If one thinks about the project as being the entire project, whatever that might be, right from the beginning, you start to get intimidated and scared. Oh, how can I possibly do that? It's too big. It's too unwieldy. It'll take too much time. But if you break it down into small steps and say, okay, what do I need to do next week? What's my first starting step? I did this when I went back into music. I wrote down literally on a napkin. I said, here are the first five or 10 steps that I need to take. and I believe that if you start with that kind of a premise that you can accomplish whatever it is you want to do and that you can break it down into an action plan of baby steps you'd be amazed at what you can accomplish love what you're doing Robert you're putting great content out into the world and I just can't help it because you know I've been coaching podcasters for over a decade now and we have over 6 ,000 members in our podcasters paradise community and I look at your show and I see that you're doing a lot of things right.

18:26One thing you're doing wrong, frankly, is you're only doing one show per week. And I have a big solution for you that's going to make your show so much better. It's going to also help other people listening who are creating content right now because this is the mindset you need to have. When you're just interviewing people, Fire Nation, you are bringing amazing people on, which is what Robert's doing, by the way. And you're taking the spotlight and you're shining it on them because they're the guest. They're the spotlight. They should be. So every now and then you've got to step back and say, you know what?

18:57I need some personal time with my audience to know, like, and trust me, to look at me as an authority and an influencer, just some personal time with them on a solo show. So my recommendation for you to test out, Robert, I think you're going to have fantastic results with it, is the next time you interview an individual and you say bye to them and boom, they're off. Go ahead, hit the record button again. And right in that moment, when you've just gotten done with that episode, say, what's up, my friends? Thanks for tuning in to the next episode. Here are the three biggest takeaways I had from the last episode with David Antion, whoever that person that you just interviewed with.

19:34And then just go through in three to five minutes, no more, no less, three to five minutes, just the top three takeaways that you had from that episode. And boom, in just about five to seven more additional minutes, when you already have the mic set up and you're already just got done with the interview, you have just created your second show of the week that is now this personal look into your biggest takeaways from that episode that's going to double the frequency of your show. and it's going to quadruple the value you're providing to your audience. It's gonna bring in a lot more listeners. So that's my big piece of advice for you.

20:10We'll see if you take it, but I will say hopefully somebody in Fire Nation is gonna be like, that's a fantastic idea. I'm gonna do that with content that I am creating. So I wanna finish strong with the Follow Your Dream Handbook, which actually comes out, I believe on August 26. So later this month, Fire Nation. Talk to us about this handbook. I know it's part memoir. It's part how-to. Why should Fire Nation get their hands on a copy? And what do you love about this project? Well, first of all, I want to say that your idea that you just expressed is fantastic. I've written it all down. I'm going to start doing it immediately.

20:48You'll love it. You will love doing it, by the way. And your audience is going to love it. And I should also add that one of the things that I do is I put out periodically new bonus music episodes because I recorded two albums during the pandemic remotely. Very, very different experience than recording albums pre-pandemic. You can't all get in the studio together. Everything has to be kind of emailed to one another. we put together an album and the second album which is called miller rocks because it's back to my rock and roll roots i am releasing in a completely novel way and that is one song at a time in a special bonus music episode of the podcast and i've already done that now three times brilliant so everybody can kind of follow that along and that's me that's all about me and my songs and I talk about the songs and my inspiration for the songs.

21:45And then I play the songs underneath my voice. And then at the end, I play them again. So it's a little bit of the idea that you've just given us, John, which I love. Going to the handbook, I said to myself, you know, I've got my music and I've got the podcast, but I really wanted something more tangible that I could offer to my audience. And I came up with the idea of putting out the Follow Your Dream handbook. Why did I call it a handbook? Well, I thought back years and years ago, there was something called the Preppy Handbook, and I kind of liked that name. And I said, okay, it's not really a novel.

22:25It's more like a handbook. It's more like a how-to kind of thing. So I tell my story, which I'm kind of summarizing in this podcast with you. And at the same time, I offer my steps, my dream theory as to how you can get from point A to point Z. And so it's a really interesting book, I think, because it gives people that motivation and that incentive to do something. And then it shows them exactly how they can get it done, no matter what their dream is. And on top After that, I threw in a whole bunch of very cool photos of not only my life, but my music and everything. So I think people are going to like it.

23:06Fire Nation, check that out. And what's the best way for them to be able to connect with you, Robert, and also get their hands on stuff like Follow Your Dream Handbook? Well, I would love it if people would subscribe and at least listen to the podcast. And again, it's called Follow Your Dream. It's on all the various platforms. and you can get to the website, which is followyourdreampodcast.com. That's got everything connected with the podcast. You can reach me just by emailing me at robert at followyourdreampodcast.com. And the other thing is I'd love everybody to check out my music. The name of the band again is Project Grand Slam.

23:48So you can go to projectgrandslam.com. We've got a store just like everybody's got a store. But more importantly, you can hear the music, you can see the pictures, you can kind of check out everything that we're doing. And it would be really great if everybody did that. Before I let you go, you shared a lot of value with your entire story. What's just one takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets before we say goodbye? The one takeaway is, again, you're never too old and it's never too late to follow your dream. man i'll tell you you definitely inspired at least one person maybe multiple listening to this right now to just say you know what what the heck am i waiting for life is so short fire nation and you know that you're the average of the five people we spend the most time with you've been hanging out with rm and jld today so keep up that heat and head over to eofire.com just type robert in the search bar and the show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about follow your dream podcast.com.

24:51You can find that on the website or of course, any of the podcast directories, email Robert. If you want to talk to him, thank him, say anything to him, robert at follow your dream podcast.com. And of course, check out project grand slam.com for all the awesomeness that he has over there. And Robert, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with fire nation today for that. We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. JLD, you are awesome. And thank you so much for having me on the show. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Robert and Fire Nation.

25:26Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. And I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. And I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk and so many others. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to learn more and order your copy today. And I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side.

26:06The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lance, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

26:41Thank you.